Soon, a jacket which charges your phone

What if you had a jacket which served a dual purpose — beat the summer heat and simultaneously charged your mobile? A Kolkata-based scientist and his team is designing a jacket, especially for traffic police and those who work in the sun for long hours. Vanita Srivastava reports.

What if you had a jacket which served a dual purpose — beat the summer heat and simultaneously charged your mobile?

Santipada GonChaudhary, a Kolkata-based scientist, and his team is designing a jacket, especially for traffic police and those who work in the sun for long hours.

Apart from being fitted with cooling elements, the jacket will have a solar cell in the pocket with a connecting lead that can be used for charging a mobile. Solar cells varying between 2.5-3 inches in size would be embedded in each shirt to generate around 400 watts of energy, sufficient to charge mobile phones.

“A prototype will be ready in a few months. The design and the components have been procured. We are now integrating the solar cells. Once the prototype is ready we will give it to a company for mass production. It should cost around Rs 1600,” he said.

He said the jacket will be two layered — in the inner layer there will be six small fans embedded with a soft blade which can be twisted.

The buttons on the shoulder, which is an accessorising element, will have solar cells that can be rotated, enhancing cooling. The jackets, he said would be of cotton.

Besides the jacket we have also prepared a solar umbrella which will have solar cell on the top and just beneath a fan which can rotate. “This should cost around Rs 800.”